The Brush Off by Laura Bradley Page A

in the stomach contents.”
    My eyes stole to the clock set in the center of Ricardo’s mirrored ceiling. It intrigued me; I’d never seen anything like it. Its foot-long gold chrome hand showed just five minutes shy of seven-thirty a.m.
    “Damn,” I muttered. “I have an appointment coming in, and no one’s there to open up until eight.”
    Jackson gauged me with a look, then sent some telepathic message to Crandall, who gave his gum a break to grunt and shove his notebook in the outside pocket of his 1970s polyester navy-blue blazer, the elbows of which were polished to a tacky shine. I wasn’t sure whether his grunt was assent or indigestion.
    “So, I can go?”
    Crandall smacked and nodded. “Yeah. You know the drill.”
    Drill? What drill? The only drill I knew about was the one in my dreams, and surely Crandall wasn’t referring to it. I stole a look at him and dismissed the thought. I tried to catch Scythe’s eye, but he was reading a piece of paper on the desk. I could feel him taking in our conversation on another level, as if he were storing it for future contemplation.
    “No,” I admitted carefully. “What drill?”
    “Don’t leave town. And don’t go trying to do a chemical peel on those fingerprints. We’re gonna require those at a near juncture in time. Unless you’ve done some business with us before. Then that won’t be necessary.”
    My heart banged up against the bottom of my throat. I pivoted from the smirking Crandall to meet Jackson Scythe’s eyes. They’d warmed to a polar summer. Maybe I wasn’t in trouble after all. “We go through a process of elimination on fingerprints. Ricardo’s. Yours. Anyone else you can think of who might have touched the brush at your shop before Ricardo took it?”
    I shook my head, feeling a little lightheaded with relief. Why had I been so tense? I didn’t have any reason to feel guilty. Guess I just didn’t trust the justice system to spare the innocent.
    Scythe left the papers on the desk and walked up to me, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket. Lucky wallet. He extracted his business card and handed it to me without a word.
    “Great, I’ll add this to my little black book,” I mumbled.
    The icy-blues moved a few degrees closer to the equator. “You do that.”
    “Now that all the pleasantries are over, hotshot, let’s get to work,” Crandall grumbled as he ambled over to the desk. He sucked in a bubble.
    “Hey, get away from there, Crandall,” the fingerprint tech piped up in what sounded like an angry Chihuahua’s bark. “You’re spraying gum spit all over that desk. Steer clear until I’m done, or I’ll be using this brush on you.”
    Everyone was making jokes about the brush—even me—and I suddenly felt the tears welling up in my eyes. Blinking them away quickly, I swallowed the lump rising in my throat. What a time to get emotional. Scythe would think it was a sudden onslaught of guilt.
    “I’m real scared,” Crandall groused, but he did move away from the desk to study the phone in the righthand corner of the room. “Why’d he have so many phones? I hope to hell they all aren’t different lines, or we’ll be knee-deep in fu…uh…effing paperwork.”
    I’d been watching Crandall hard, in order to get my grief under control, but I suddenly realized Jackson Scythe had been watching me. “Well?” he said.
    What was he after? I looked down at my left hand, which I’d forgotten was holding the barf bag. I handed it, unused, back to him. It was the perfect way to lighten the moment. I forced a dazzling smile. “Thanks.”
    “You keep it. Never know when it might come in handy.”
    What did that mean? He still looked expectant, if a six-foot-three great stone face with dry-ice eyes can show such an emotion.
    Though not usually patient, I found myself standing there, not moving a muscle, just to bug him.
    Finally, he cleared his throat. “I was hoping to get your card, Miz Sawyer.”
    I flashed a grin—a real